Negative Feedback Limits Global Warming?
Great little essay via Glenn:
Marohasy: “That’s right. The satellite was only launched in 2002 and it enabled the collection of data, not just on temperature but also on cloud formation and water vapour. What all the climate models suggest is that, when you’ve got warming from additional carbon dioxide, this will result in increased water vapour, so you’re going to get a positive feedback. That’s what the models have been indicating. What this great data from the NASA Aqua satellite … (is) actually showing is just the opposite, that with a little bit of warming, weather processes are compensating, so they’re actually limiting the greenhouse effect and you’re getting a negative rather than a positive feedback.”
With the news that the oceans are not warming (which warming is supposed to drive the change in global temps), that the upper layers of the atmosphere are not warming as the models say they should, and that the models assumed an infinitely thick atmosphere, we’re left with a warming trend mostly indicated by unreliable surface stations, which may be a result of urban sprawl.
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5 comments
I don’t have a link for this, but…
At the 1 atmosphere altitude on Venus, the temperature is comfortable. As best I can tell, this is a result of the properties of water, balancing between vapor and clouds.
To be fair, you can do a lot of really good science with inaccurate assumptions. An infinitely thick atmosphere might make a difficult to integrate but potentially negligible term drop out of the equations. I’m not familiar with the literature, but that doesn’t a priori strike me as a bad assumption to make - in the early stages of investigation.
It does strike me as a bad assumption to leave as the underpinnings of the science when people are using it to make policy. It’s good to see some seemingly more correct theories getting play in the community, though.
Elisha Feger’s last blog post..Operation: Opera
Elisha:
The point that was being made was not some esoteric comment about some obscure mathematical technique.
The point was that the models that have generated an entire global industry of fear, guilt and social engineering are deeply and demonstrably flawed and further, that those flaws have been in the available data for at least a decade, and still the “Global Warming” factions have not acknowledged these basic scientific facts while claiming to be the ones following science in the first place.
Frankly this whole Global Warming fiasco is one of the most glaring examples of the hubris of scientists and politicians I have seen since the “nuclear freeze” insanity of the seventies when you had “scientists” like Carl Sagan testifying in Congress that a single atomic bomb blast could trigger a “nuclear winter” in apparent disregard for the hundreds of such tests that had been performed already, without measurably altering the climate.
The reality is exactly what the skeptics have been saying since “Global Warming” entered the lexicon. It’s a fabricated emergency driven by bad science, bad assumptions and a rush to judgment that would be embarrassing for a high school newspaper, much less a global scientific fraternity.
And when it all comes crumbling down as the gloom and doom prophecies don’t materialize, but the massive costs and economic impact DO materialize, the world’s non-scientists will simply conclude that scientists are morons and politicians are opportunistic control freaks. And they won’t be far wrong.
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..Buckyball paper!
I think we’re saying very similar things. I’m saying the thing that they should be ashamed of is using these models for anything other than purely investigative pursuits. The crime isn’t in the model itself, but the fact that they’re being used for political means. I wouldn’t use a similarly flawed model for the sun (to take an example from my field, though solar models are really very good anymore) as the basis for demanding that the government or society at large take action on some issue.
So yeah, I think we’re saying very similar things. In my case it’s “Blame the people, not the models.”
As a side note: I’ve never liked Carl Sagan anyway. :p
Elisha Feger’s last blog post..Tristan und Isolde
Well, I suppose I can sleep comfortably knowing that the polar ice caps will reverse their accelerating melting trend, then.
I have no doubt that mistakes have been made in figuring all this out, especially since the global weather system is such a phenomenally complicated beast, but it’s pretty clear that significant global climate changes are occurring, and I find it hard to believe that the huge sums of CO2 we’re pumping into the atmosphere aren’t playing a part in that. It would just be too coincidental otherwise.
(Also note that the article on the sea temperate changes contains a variety of possible explanations, most of which still allow for global warming. Be careful not to do exactly what you’re accusing others of doing, by jumping to a conclusion for political reasons.)
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